


something old, something familiar, and something new

by acceptnosubstitutes



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: F/M, No character bashing, Spoilers: 4x09, alien spikes, lady friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2167128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/acceptnosubstitutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie is less okay with the spikes than she’s willing to tell Hal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something old, something familiar, and something new

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to see Denny help Maggie out for female friendship, and ladies talking to each other about shit. Instead they gave me Ben and Maggie, which while cute, was so not what I wanted.
> 
> So I fixed it, a little.

She’s alone. Or at least it feels that way, and then she’s not really feeling anything. A sort of floating around, light as a feather, unreal. Like she’s weightless. Or not even human.

Maggie’s eyes snap open, and she rolls over. Still in med bay, on that uncomfortable, unpadded table. Someone’s been thoughtful enough to slip another pillow under her head, and the elevated angle keeps the spikes imprinted into her back from scraping along the hard surface.

It’s a good thing. Not too sure she could have taken the scrip scrap, right now.

Maggie makes herself comfortable on her left side, facing the chair next to her bed and the sleeping, only other person in the room with her.

For reasons she’s not keen to examine, she’s relieved the first thing she focuses on after dark hair is the dreadlocks.

Of course, that doesn’t explain what Denny’s doing there, in the first place.

Maggie only has to watch her for a few seconds before Denny stirs. More like stiffens up, eyes flying open and fixing on a spot in thin air before she blinks. Relaxes.

Maggie shivers. Is that what she’ll look like now, when she wakes?

“Hey,” Maggie says, clearing her throat a few times to get the words out. Her voice still sounds husky, rough even to her own ears.

Denny gets up and vanishes from Maggie’s vision. She returns with a tall glass of water, helps Maggie up so she can drink some, and then eases her back down when she turns her head.

Maggie groans. It feels like every muscle in her body has that well worn, deep set in ache she usually only gets after long battles or when she’s ignored her body long enough it’s rebelled in protest.

It’s not a thing she lets happen often.

“Why am I so weak?”

Denny shrugs. “My guess? Your spikes are incomplete, and that’s effecting how you’re feeling right now. How _are_ you feeling, anyway? Cold? Paranoid?”

Maggie’s brow furrows at her, but Denny chuckles softly.

“The spikes,” she says, “heighten things, at first. Response to temperature. Emotions.”

Maggie runs her tongue over her teeth and thinks. The hairs on her arms are standing up, little shivers that pass through her off and on, but less now that she’s waking up. She blinks the rest of sleep from her eyes and crosses her arms, rubbing up and down to warm the rest of the chill away.

“Why would I be paranoid?”

“It’s a typical reaction, at first,” Denny assures her, “I mean, you have alien metal embedded in your spine now. Makes your brain a little wonky, you know?”

Huh. Maybe that explains earlier. Maggie squints at Denny and imagines someone else in that chair, lounging an inelegant sprawl, mouth open and snoring in sleep.

She closes her eyes. The quell of, what she now realizes is _panic_ , pinches at her shoulder blades and she resists the urge to twist around and try and rip the spikes out again.

Its why Anne sedated her last night, insisting she be kept overnight as she and the spikes settle into each other. Well, that, and Maggie’s pretty sure she spent an hour screaming at her, just that one word, why.

Last night’s still a bit hazy.

She puts an arm over her forehead, shielding her eyes from what is suddenly overly bright sunlight filtering from the open door way.

Footsteps leave her bedside, cross the room, and Maggie hears the rustle of canvas cutting the light in half. Makes it a little harder to see, or at least that’s what she expects when she lowers her arm.

But she can still pick out Denny’s form a lot easier when she returns, than she should be able in the fading darkness.

Oh. Right, the spikes. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Maggie says, “but why are you here?”

Denny grins.

“Expecting Hal?” 

Maggie flinches. Denny’s smile softens into something maybe like understanding.

“He was here,” she says, settling into her chair again, “but I think he went off to check on Ben.”

Maggie glances over.

“What’s wrong with Ben?”

“Nothing, nothing. He’s just weak. A little, like you. To be expected.”

To be expected. Maggie snorts. Denny shifts again.

“So,” she draws the vowel out, like she doesn’t think she should go on and is buying time. “How are you with, well, all this?”

Maggie turns away, but only onto her back. It’s easier to lay down at the moment, but being on her side exposes the back of her neck. Any sort of small breeze that hits there is extremely disconcerting.

“I’m not okay,” she says, finally.

Thought about lying, at first. Give Denny that old grin, some pithy saying about how it’ll take a lot more than some alien tech to do Maggie in. But.

Maggie doesn’t have anything to prove to Denny. Not like Hal. Not like Hal, who thinks he did her a favor by going over her head.

She might’ve been in pain, but she knew what she was asking. And it’s not like she wanted death, that she wanted to leave Hal behind, alone, with his family and 2nd Mass, yeah, but without her.

It’s just Maggie remembers holding a screaming Ben, seeing the bruises sprout all over his torso, spikes glowing bright, bright blue.

And if an Espheni can worm its way into Ben’s mind? Just. Like. That?

Maggie huffs a laugh, mostly to blow out a little of the tightness building in her chest. Takes a few more deep breaths. Ignores it.

“Look,” Denny says, “I know I can hardly say anything, but Hal only did it because he -”

“Loves me,” Maggie interrupts, abrupt. Does not apologize. “Because he loves me. I get it. And you’re right.”

“Right?”

Maggie shifts a little on the bed, rolls her shoulders. “You can’t really say anything.”

In the quiet that ensues, Maggie turns her head. Reaches out and seeks Denny’s hand in the dark, which Denny finds before she does, gives an encouraging squeeze back.

“I get it,” Maggie continues, soft, “but if it isn’t the cancer, it’s Pope, and if it isn’t Pope now its the spikes. They get, they get, in my head. Make me not _me_.”

She’s not all too sure Denny understands what she’s saying. 

That she doesn’t hate Hal, for what he did. But that she can’t fully accept it, either.

That she has a moment, a guilty moment, where Maggie wonders if this was what Karen felt. And if it drove her insane.

She bites her lip.

Just another thing she doesn’t have control over.

But Denny squeezes her hand, rubs a thumb over the top of it, and _does_ something. Maggie’s not sure what. But one moment Maggie’s blinking away tears and the next every ache in her body dims, just a little, melts into deep warmth.

“It’s not so bad,” Denny murmurs. 

Maggie’s abruptly reminded neither Denny, or Ben for that matter, had a choice with the spikes any more than she did.

“I mean, it sucks,” Denny continues, laughs, “every time it rains. It’s like having a bad leg. Sometimes they catch on your shirt, and they always tear. You learn to keep your neck straight, sit up straight, or sometimes the top spikes rub into your skin. Pinch. It’s not fun.”

Maggie doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t let go of Denny’s hand.

“Gotta be good on your posture,” she ventures.

Denny barks a laugh. “Yeah, there’s that. I can’t slouch anymore. Wrecking my image, man.”

Maggie maybe, maybe, sparks a tiny smile. 

“I could teach you,” Denny says, all of a sudden. 

Maggie starts, pulling her hand out of her grasp and is half sitting up before she realizes she’s no longer light-headed, and when she talks, her voice is level again.

“What?”

Denny shrugs. “Not like there’s a book on ‘How to function with bits of metal in your back,’” she says, “but I’ve been around. Know some things. It’s not all about the mental stuff, you know? I mean, gotta get used to that, but it’s like being a baby again, kind of. Out of your depths on everything.”

“Of course,” Denny says, unreadable, “there’s always Ben.”

There’s always Ben. And isn’t that the truth? If it isn’t Hal, it’s Ben.

Maggie doesn’t know what’s up with Ben. It’s one thing to give her the spikes to save her life. To believe that’s what she wanted. It’s quite another to see her upright again and break out into choked tears with that look in his eyes.

She can’t put her finger on what it is, what it means. But maybe she’s had a little too much Mason in her life lately.

“Okay,” Maggie says.

Simple. Okay. Maybe she needs to try something new, for a while.


End file.
